Target Adds Plant-Based to Private Label Lineup

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Non-dairy chocolate mousse. Buffalo cauliflower wings. Italian-style meatless meatballs. It’s not the new menu at Eleven Madison Park—it’s the lineup for Target’s latest private label expansion.

Good & Gather, Target’s largest private label food brand, with 2,000 items, is adding 30+ plant-based products to its assortment. With low margins for retailers and lower prices for consumers, private labels like Good & Gather are exploding in popularity…

• Good & Gather is one of 10 Target-owned brands to cross the billion-dollar sales threshold, generating $2+ billion in revenue last year.
• Across aisles, Coresight Research reports private label sales grew faster than name-brand groceries for the fourth consecutive year in 2020. Still, they only amounted to ~17% of the total US grocery market.

Nutrition facts: Good & Gather isn’t foraging in the plant-based aisle for the fun of it. Target shoppers are increasingly demanding more plant-based options, Chief Food and Beverage Officer Rick Gomez said in a release. Already, Target’s plant-based assortment has grown “fivefold” over the past three years, per Grocery Dive.

Competition aplenty: Retailers from Amazon (with its Aplenty line) to Albertsons (with ~800 new private label items incoming) are also investing in owned grocery brand expansions this year. Target’s betting that a line tied to a growing trend will extend its billion-dollar streak. — HL